Standing by that belief, Beacon is distributing $128,000 in grants to four community-based behavioral health organizations that are combatting the opioid crisis in Massachusetts at the grassroots level.

A recent Open Minds piece entitled “Untangling the Access Issues for Addiction Treatment” points to four reasons as to why addiction services are rarely or never accessible.

… Most people wouldn’t argue the role these factors play in contributing to access challenges for OUD treatment. However, some people might argue that we need to probe further to untangle what access really looks like in the larger health care delivery system.

The prevalence of substance use disorder (SUD), highlighted by the opioid crisis, is not new news.

Approximately, 21 million Americans have an SUD. In 2015 alone, opioids killed more than 33,000 people in the United States, more than any previous year on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Paul Gileno, founder and president of the U.S. Pain Foundation, recently addressed in an opinion piece the common ascribed-to culprits of the opioid crisis: overprescribing physicians, Big Pharma and even demanding patients.

However, he adds to his list of culprits one not usually seen: the health insurance industry, essentially arguing that insurance does not cover many non-pharmaceutical options for pain relief, such as physical therapy, massage, biofeedback and more.

So often when we speak about mental illness and substance use disorders, we talk about numbers: the number of people who have died from overdoses; the number of people who take antidepressants; the cost of mental health to society at large.

However, at the Kennedy Forum Illinois in December, keynote speakers put a face and soul to addiction.

Almost a century has passed, but these words continue to ring true and speak to our current tragic opiate crisis.

This crisis has touched almost everyone I have met and has spared no demographic group. The silver lining in this cloudy sky is the mobilization and alignment of legislators, medical professionals, the public and the insurance industry on wiping out this epidemic. Fortunately, changes have occurred rapidly that foretell a positive direction.